


To His Queen

by Starbrow



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21627289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbrow/pseuds/Starbrow
Summary: In the Silver Sea, Caspian sees everything a little more clearly.
Relationships: Caspian/Lucy Pevensie
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49
Collections: Lucian Exchange 2019





	To His Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).



_What would ordinary life be like, after this?_

These days of light, overwhelming light; of things bigger and brighter and _realer_ than they had ever seemed; of fevered anticipation of what lay before them. The smell of the lilies hung thick and wild around them, pulling visions of the impossible becoming possible. And the water that was somehow better than any food or drink, that made him feel drunker than any wine or ale and yet he stood clear-eyed and of sounder mind than he’d ever been.

It was like nothing Caspian had ever or, he knew, would ever experience again. He did not think of going back often, but when he did, he wondered if it would all seem flat and small and dull. Life without this light...without Lucy.

She’d become indeliably entwined with it in his mind. He would carry to his last breath the vision of her standing in the stern of the boat with wet armfuls of fragrant white lilies, bathed in white light, his white shirt clinging to her arms. She seemed bigger and brighter than he’d remembered; a Queen of old, ancient, ageless. The closer they’d come to the Edge of the World, the more like herself she became; the Queen Lucy he’d known from legends and long-lost art, before he’d ever met the golden-haired girl with laughter in her eyes. Now, she was both, gazing up at him from the boat in a sea of white, laughing, and she did not have to tell him to look, but she did.

He wanted to never stop looking.

How fortunate that they did not need to waste time eating or sleeping. And those things did seem like wastes of time, now. He had to cherish every page of this adventure, like the end of a book that was too good, that you must know the ending of and yet hate to know that it is coming to an end. He tried to read slowly, to take small gulps.

But Lucy wasn’t like that. She swallowed the world with abandon, embracing the ecstasy with her whole being. And inevitably, Caspian found himself caught up in that embrace.

Nights were short here, but it didn’t matter when you didn’t sleep anyways. The lights on the ship caught glimmers of the lilies beneath them, a sea of shadowed silver below, and spun gold out of Lucy’s unbound hair catching the breeze off the forecastle. Caspian joined her there. They were quiet for long moments. That was the strange thing about this place. They didn’t always have to say things to be heard.

When at last her voice threaded into the silence, he heard in it the intoxicating joy of these moments, like it’d finally bubbled over into words. “I haven’t been counting the days,” she admitted. “It could have been months that we’ve been in the Silver Sea, but it hasn’t felt like that, has it?”

“No,” said Caspian, and it was the truth, and a little less. “It somehow never grows tiresome. In fact, just the opposite. I wish for each day to continue just as it is, and for the next to exceed it.”

It was a gift, this time. Endless hours to talk with his companions, to walk in silence, to swim amidst the lilies around the little boat. When would it vanish?

“It is...so much,” Lucy whispered. Her voice was the smallest of lights in the quiet midnight. “Everything I knew from Narnia, but doubled over and over.” Her hand curled around the railing. He watched the flex of small, sturdy fingers on the carved wood, and felt a sympathetic twinge within his chest, as if she squeezed the flesh of his heart within her palm rather than unfeeling oak. “If it’s like this here...what must Aslan’s Country be like?”

The wistfulness in her voice was palpable, like hunger twisting in the belly. Caspian found himself envious of a place. He clutched the railing. “You would see it, if you could.”

“Of course.” She turned to meet his gaze at last. The movement of her next to him fluttered the billows of his shirt against his arm. She wore his clothes as proudly as any royal robes, so perfectly at home in them that he had not thought to suggest she acquire any women’s clothing on any of the islands, and she had not sought it out. “And I will, I think. Sooner or later. But I would not choose to end this time so soon. It is all too wonderful.”

His silence was pure agreement, unable to express it in words any more eloquently. He looked out at the strange stars and thought of Narnia and its cozy constellations and cheerful ordinary sun, and how perfectly content he could be there if he only had Lucy and her fierce aura of light to fill his days with a taste of this sweetness.

In the cool night, he felt the warmth of her hand cover the back of his. “I feel that I can’t stand much more of this.”

“Yet I don’t want it to stop.”

She knew what he meant. She always did. And the hunger this time was not for a place but for this feeling between them. Caspian was appeased.

He threaded their fingers, curled them together. “There is no one I would rather see the world’s end with than you.”

Her fingers tightened through and over his. He waited, hardly breathing. “You pledged to Dawn,” said Lucy, at last, but there was no bitterness in her voice, drenched in the waters of the Silver Sea. “You almost promised to go back, when you’d broken the enchantment.” A kiss unclaimed lay between them.

He thought of Dawn as he’d last seen her, tall and straight as a Queen in the sheath of her dress, the curtains of her yellow hair catching the morning light, and a smile upon her lips. Beautiful beyond compare. He thought of Lucy, arms spilling with lilies, a blaze of white suffusing her simply clad form, and beauty took on new shape. One that wore trousers and waded into an unknown sea without hesitation, that kicked off her shoes and swam like hell in the middle of deep waters, that ran headlong at a dragon to cure its ailments. 

Caspian drew her hand to his lips. “There are many enchantments in this world.”

He could hear the soft rasp of her breath. The back of her hand smelled of the lilies, of grass and sun and salt. He was surprised to feel the slight quiver in her limb. She was the most valiant person he knew, matched only by Reepicheep. How could a simple homage make her tremble?

“I cannot break all of them,” he said, and brushed his lips against her skin. “But this one will break on its own, I think.”

It was her hand against the back of his head drawing him down, and her lips that touched his first, tasting sweet and cool and wild. Lucy made a soft noise, and Caspian felt its echoes down his spine. He kissed her as he might drink from the water. No matter how much he drank, he knew it would never be enough. And he knew he could live off of it forever.

Her head tipped back. He bent over her and let the kiss bloom. It should taste bittersweet, knowing it was both first and last, but Lucy would not let it be so. She was all keen joy, fingertips curling into the roots of his hair and keeping him grounded to this time and place with her. She was the water, the light, the air, the earth of long-ago Narnia, as if it had seeped up into her bare toes and become part of her blood.

Caspian could not think of a Narnia without her.

She breathed, lips parting from his, and old and new stars were in her eyes. They stood a moment, saying nothing, needing to say nothing. Then she let go, and he felt adrift again. She reached for something beside her, bent. There was a sound like the lapping of waves, before she rose and held between them a cup, filled from the buckets of sweet water that were scattered around the ship these days, food and drink alike for the passengers.

“Pledge to me,” said Lucy. He could deny her nothing.

He took the cup from her, and gave the only pledge that he could. “To my Queen,” said Caspian, and drank.

He offered it to her. She took it. “To your Queen,” she said, and drank.

Soon, he would read their pages in Aslan’s Country, and a new enchantment might begin.

**Author's Note:**

> That sudden snap near the end the book when Caspian decides to go to Aslan's Country? I just had to fill in that gap. With a Lucian reason, obvs. Happy endings are always just out of reach, and that's the way we like it. 
> 
> ~Always a King or Queen


End file.
